Writing From Fear by Jennifer McMahon

LUCY BURDETTE: Hallie and I went on book tour with today's guest a number of years ago. Jennifer is the sweetest, kindest person you can imagine--and today she writes about the question we both had: How does this quiet, kind person write THOSE books?? Welcome Jennifer!

JENNIFER MCMAHON: At an event for my latest novel, My Darling Girl, someone asked me, “You seem like such a nice, normal person – how can you write such scary stuff?” It’s certainly not the first time I’ve been asked, and in the last few years, I think I’ve come pretty close to the answer.

I wrote my first short story in the third grade, a school assignment – it was about a boy who is pursued by the glowing green apparition of a meatball he had eaten for dinner. Writing that story opened a door to a world I got lost in. It was the first time I remember doing something where I truly forgot all about all the real life stuff happening around me, where I lost track of time and reality, and realized I could make anything happen – it was magic.

My teacher, the amazing Mrs. Brennan, loved my haunted meatball story, and encouraged me to write more and bring them to her. So I wrote a story about a mud monster. Then another about a boy who discovers a dead body behind the wall in his bedroom. Each day after school, I sat myself down at our dining room table and wrote scary stories. Of course at the time, I didn’t think about why I was drawn to write about the things that unsettled me, the terrible imaginings that kept me up at night.

As an adult who makes my living writing novels in which scary things happen – whether it’s a serial killer or a vengeful ghost or a possible demonic possession – I’ve thought a lot about what drives me to explore the darker side of fiction and creativity. I was an anxious and fearful kid who loved monster movies and ghost stories, loved terrifying my little brother and the neighborhood kids with elaborate pranks. In addition to my early love for fictional horrors, I had a lot of real world things to worry about. My mom was an alcoholic who struggled with mental illness. I was never sure who or what I might find when I got home from school each day – happy, manic mom who was ready to whisk me off on some adventure; morose, drunk mom who’d locked herself in her room; or perhaps, unconscious mom with empty booze and/or pill bottles beside her.

I think that reading and writing scary stuff didn’t just help me escape – it made me feel braver. It was horror I could control. I could close the book, stop writing the story when I got too scared. And exploring my fears on the page, be it through reading or writing, helped me to learn things about myself. Maybe it even helped me build coping skills. And no matter how scared I got, there was this immense rush at the end because I’d faced this terrible thing on the page and survived. I was able to carry that bravery with me into the real world and maybe, just maybe, be a little less afraid.

We’ve all heard the writing advice: What what you know. But my own take on that, my own writing mantra is Write what scares you. I’ve realized that to get to the truly good stuff, the stuff that gets my heart racing and mind whirling, I need to tap into my own fears. When I drag them out from the under the bed or from inside closet into the light day, I can explore them safely, poke at them with long sticks, ask my fears questions and learn truths about myself in the process. And now, as then, it makes me feel more brave. More alive.

Despite this, my latest book, My Darling Girl, was a story I tried really hard not to write. There are things that “scare you,” and then there are things that TERRIFY you, you know? For me, that includes demons – the kind that possess a person, wear them like a mask, make them do terrible things, beyond their control. And we all know that demons must be summoned. Writing an entire novel about a woman who comes to believe her estranged, dying mother is actually possessed by a demon seemed even more risky than playing with a Ouija board. And yet, after years of playing with the idea, pulling it out and poking at it, testing it, telling myself that I needed to follow my own advice, I did it anyway.

I think third-grade Jennifer would be proud.

Reds and Readers, how do you feel about scary or terrifying stories?

Jennifer McMahon is the New York Times Bestselling author of twelve novels, including Promise Not to Tell, The Winter People, and her latest, My Darling Girl. She lives in Florida with her partner, Drea.

About the book:

The New York Times bestselling author of the “otherworldly treat” (People) The Drowning Kind and The Children on the Hill returns with a spine-tingling psychological thriller about a woman who, after taking in her dying, alcoholic mother, begins to suspect demonic possession is haunting her family.

Alison has never been a fan of Christmas. But with it right around the corner and her husband busily decorating their cozy Vermont home, she has no choice but to face it. Then she gets the call.

Mavis, Alison’s estranged mother, has been diagnosed with cancer and has only weeks to live. She wants to spend her remaining days with her daughter, son-in-law, and two granddaughters. But Alison grew up with her mother’s alcoholism and violent abuse and is reluctant to unearth these traumatic memories. Still, she eventually agrees to take in Mavis, hoping that she and her mother could finally heal and have the relationship she’s always dreamed of.

But when mysterious and otherworldly things start happening upon Mavis’s arrival, Alison begins to suspect her mother is not quite who she seems. And as the holiday festivities turn into a nightmare, she must confront just how far she is willing to go to protect her family.